Angela Woodford wrote:Mary, do you remember a group of us went on a Surrey Youth Hostelling Trip in the holidays?

I can remember arriving at Tanners' Hatch, where your brother was leaning out of an upper window eating a radish! Another Hostel was Holmbury St Mary and there was one more hostel too.

We CH girls meekly did the morning maintenence duties required of us. Just like school, really!

Who else was on that trip? Do you remember?

Munch

I remember Susan Knight, and (I think) Caroline Barrett. I went hostelling on another occasion with Julia (I can't remember her surname - I think she was in your year in sixes) but I don't know if she was on the trip you remember.

Happy days! It's amazing how, although I haven't thought of them for decades, the memories flood back. I'll post again later, but I really ought to go to work now.

I really ought to do useful things now. It's terrible, how addictive this Forum is.

But I've just remembered the Forbidden Greenline Bus (single storey) had a stop just to the right of the school gates as you were facing outwards. So if anyone had tried to catch it there they'd have been instantly spotted.

Still niggling about the name of the Hertford small department store, and maybe... Graveson's??

Munch

"Baldrick, you wouldn't recognise a cunning plan if it painted itself purple, and danced naked on top of a harpsichord singing "Cunning plans are here again.""

Up until the demise of the green-line service, sometime in the late 70's/early 80's, Dorking bus garage was home to three green line services. 713, 714, and 715. (No 715A which I assume went elsewhere from the Hertford area).

All three services were long distance and travelled through central London to destinations that my ageing brain has forgotton, other than to say one of them, the 714 I believe, which terminated at Luton.

PS Munch - your photo/slides are just brilliant. Twenty years on and my colleagues and I looked just the same. I'm going on a picture hunt at my parents' house today. Fingers crossed I can find something. Then spend another twenty years scanning and fiddling.

Catherine Standing (Cooper) Canteen Cath 1.12 (1983-85) & Col A 20 (1985-90)Any idiot can deal with a crisis. It takes a genius to cope with everyday life.

Doesn't look like we'd "pick up an infection" on that vehicle. Much more likely on the awful old train to Liverpool Street.

I only travelled by train a couple of times. One time in the V1 form with Jill Wright and Susan Lintott - why I don't know. As soon as we'd left Hertford East, out came what make-up we'd got, modification to uniform was accomplished and hair was loosened.

Munch

I remember a couple of us stripping down to our underwear to change in the back of a cab to remove all traces of CH before we got to Charing Cross, gave the cabbie an eyeful.

Didn't someone once get caught on the train in make-up and have to take it all off again before Liverpool St?

"If a man speaks, and there isn't a woman to hear him, is he still wrong?"

Katharine wrote:As far as I recall, the 715 was the long distance (Greenline) bus so you could get really far away!!

Yes, indeed, but would it have gone to Dorking? A direct Greenline from Hertford to Dorking seems a little unlikely.

Now, having listened to the Railway Announcer at Tulse Hill for the two years that I spent at St Martin's, I know that the way to Dorking is/was by train via Streatham Hill, Streatham, Streatham Common, ........... Ashtead, Leatherhead and Box Hill

The much loved lamented Greenline buses used to run on all sorts of routes which defied rhyme or reason!

The 701 and 702 routes both commenced in Gravesend, Kent and would run via Shooters Hill to Ascot and Sunningdale. I can't remember which was which all these years on!

I suppose the aim of the Greenlines may have been to service what is now the area covered by the M25.

Thinking back, we didn't go to Charing Cross, we went to Knightsbridge and had our hair cut at the Vidal Sassoon school as mentioned elsewhere. I have a picture somewhere wearing a bright orange jumbo cord button through pinafore dress (very short) and navy silk bouse (school needlework). The pic is in black and white unfortunately 'cos you could see that orange dress for miles.

"If a man speaks, and there isn't a woman to hear him, is he still wrong?"

I remember other trips, but may be confusing some with my VIth form holidays, in which case I was hostelling with friends from St Martin's - still remember a gorgeous guy from Denver, but think we met in Cornwall (post CH).

I have a photograph of Bun and Mary collapsed onto their rucksacks - will try to remember to dig out and scan it.

xx

Caroline Payne (nee Barrett)
Hertford 6.20 1965-70

Adelaide, dear Adelaide; where the water is foul, but the wines more than make up for it.

Thank you, thank you Mary. I was saying to Alex "Grayson's"? And she said "Nah!" But I was close, and then the name came to me.

It was a nice shop, for Hertford! And now it's closing...

RR is right in my case - I used to look at that Greenline going past and think - I could just hop on that - wonder how long it would be before anyone noticed I was missing - but not a proper running-away plan -

I really do plan to do a trip to Hertford sometime and see how it's changed.

Love, Munch

"Baldrick, you wouldn't recognise a cunning plan if it painted itself purple, and danced naked on top of a harpsichord singing "Cunning plans are here again.""

I went hostelling in Surrey several times, sometimes with my brother on bicycles, and sometimes walking with CH friends.

I remember excited planning at school, with wild talk of roaming the countryside, and sleeping in barns or haystacks. I'm glad we decided to stay in hostels after all.

We made lists of things we'd need, and divided them up between us. It was like a chapter from "Three Men in a Boat". We only had one pen between us, and would compete for it at night to write up our diaries.

We made a YHA-approved cotton inner sleeping bag (for Caroline?) on the house sewing machine. It was the end of term, and we took great joy in disregarding all we had been taught in our sewing lessons, and making wonky seams with unfinished raw edges.

I had a framed rucksack, with extra foam padding stitched to the straps. Susan had been promised the loan of a rucksack, but there was a misunderstanding and it turned out to be a duffle bag.

We stopped at a village green, and bought individual fruit pies from the shops,and plasters for our blistered feet. The shop keeper disapproved, and said that proper planning would prevent blisters.

On another occasion (possibly after we had left school) a group of us stayed at the hostel in Stratford, to see plays at the theatre. We bought cheap tickets and stood at the back. Our feet ached. I loved the way the last bus did not leave at a fixed time, but waited until the theatre had closed. I think I still have a poster of Hamlet in the attic. It's not mine, I borrowed it from someone. Does anyone claim it?

Really, my memories of the hostelling trips are very hazy. I'm hoping others can add more.